VRTP://HOUSEBOOK.EARTH//FAMILYHOMES/USERS/BARNESPACK/BUNGALOWBACK -YARD.VR
Home at last, in mind at least! As the storm raged outside the London pop-in where their bodies were resident, Gimlet and Frankie dove, merging with their pack.
Marie’s e-state was a freestanding bungalow surrounded by profuse, fragrant herb gardens, a croquet pitch, and a serpentine river jumping with trout. Parent and child ported in on the porch, clad in casual summerwear: straw hat and sand-colored linen suit for Gimlet, Bermuda shorts and a shirt for Frankie. Picnic gear, default presentation for family time.
Frankie wheeled, trying the cottage door—each of the pack’s back doors led to the others’ houses. She hit a lock.
“Rollsy’s sleeping, child,” Marie called. She and Bella were out wading in the river’s clear, calf-deep water.
Marie had spent the Clawback planting trees within the first catch-as-catch-can evacuation zones in Northern Europe, earning her way into the WestEuro megacity. The nights of her youth had been spent huddled in camps in places like New Sherwood Forest. Lying body to body with half-chilled strangers, the work crews had endured considerable harassment from people who hadn’t bought in yet, mobs of densification refugees determined to reclaim, by force if necessary, their personal patch of suburban sprawl.
Grim, backbreaking days. She told tales of blasting the concrete foundations of highways, of driving pickaxes into tarmac, drinking scavenged water.
How the old lady had come out of it all with such a generous spirit—much less an intact sense of humor—was beyond Gimlet.
Frankie gave the porch door one hard, angry shake before bolting into Bella’s arms.
“C’mon, Chickpea,” Bella said, hauling her onto the banks, conjuring a hammock. She threw a stream of confetti at Gimlet as she went—little pix representing strength, hearts, hug icons. Then mother and daughter snuggled in, side by side.
“Shoes off,” Gimlet subbed, and was suddenly barefoot. The crisp trousers rolled up of their own accord. They joined Marie, stepping into her trout stream.
Ah! Soothing cushion of mucky sand underfoot. The water was crystal-clear and cold enough to invigorate. Emerald weeds twisted in spirals, undulating with the push of the stream.
“Dear one.” Marie wound her sturdy black fingers into Gimlet’s chalky ones. They pressed their foreheads together, commiserating. Gimlet spat feelings out, manifesting each as a cool, round stone, brought up from within. They dropped, one by one, into the water between their sand-kissed toes:
#Fatigue, #sorrow, #anger, #abandonment. Released, each tagged feel sank into the riverbed, slowly vanishing.
“I’ll barbecue steak later,” Marie said. “Push protein.”
Gimlet nodded. “How are you?”
Marie dropped some pebbles of her own. #Worry, #stress, #hope. Splash, splash, splash. Her grip on Gimlet’s hands tightened. #Love.
“I saw Rubi Whiting,” Gimlet said.
“Danced with,” she corrected.
“You had time to backscroll my week?”
Marie pursed her lips, emanating infectious, old-lady mischief. One always half-expected her to offer some laughable suggestion: Let’s steal a bike. Let’s hit a fancy kitchen and order printed bologna and soda crackers. Let’s go punting, in the flesh. On the Thames. During a snowstorm.
“Don’t tease,” Gimlet said.
“Did I say anything?”
“That smirk of yours passes for moji.”
“You swore, swore, nothing would ever come of that kissing scene with the delectable Mer Whiting.”
“She’s got almost as much trouble on her plate as we do.” Gimlet tipped a brow in the direction of the cottage.
“I’m not suggesting we get up tux and tails and write a prenup for the woman,” Marie said.
“But?”
“With Rollsy and Sangria out of play, you need a little heat in your sheets.”
“You don’t, I suppose. Why don’t you hunt yourself up some randy oldfeller? Franks could use a grandad.”
“Dear Mada Grouse. I am screening candidates daily.”
For all Gimlet knew, it was true.
Flirt, fight, flirt some more. Gimlet had been offered the star-crossed romance angle with Rubi, in the superhero sim Slugfest, over a year ago now. The subplot brought their civilian identities together in a series of character scenes. Scripted banter and sparks flying. High society parties and a parade on the Champs-Élysées, over holiday fireworks. Gimlet remembered the gut-lurch that had gone through them when Risto offered to engineer a kissing scene.
Accept or Cancel? The words had left them in turmoil, like a lovestruck, pre-implanted kid.
Accept.
Rubi accepted, too.
Gimlet had played romance subplots in earlier sims. The intimate scenes were a peculiar experience, certainly, but if you weren’t up for the final act-out, you ghosted. The graphics team and a consenting body double ran your toon through the motions of smooch and pet.
With Rubi … had they simply gotten into a game of chicken, with neither of them willing to back down? Feeds showed her live, present, in scene just as Gimlet was.
Rubi’s fingers, on their face, had felt like live wires. Sure grip and a first brush of lip on lip, sizzling. None of it, not the press of body or the eventual, gasping break, had felt like acting.
Ninety minutes later, they had been suited up and battling it out in that duel to the death over Centre Pompidou.
On their next go-round, Ghosts of Paris 1818, Rubi had refused the romance subplot.
Disinterested, then, Gimlet thought. She took a bite, didn’t like the taste.
But that dance, recently, in Rubi’s e-state …
Marie made a smug little noise.
“All right,” Gimlet said. “Maybe she’s a long-term prospect. Emphasis on long. We need to get Franks back to the three of you. Tooning in for family time is fine, but we can’t have her in a diving helmet all day.”
The old woman nodded, watching the water streaming past their ankles. The undulation of the weeds was hypnotic.
Bella, over in the hammock, subbed, “Babygirl’s fast asleep.”
Gimlet leaned in, giving Marie a proper hug and popping a burst of hearts to seal the deal. Then they splashed their way up the banks.
Beyond the bungalow door was a country kitchen: stone counters, copper pans, and bunches of hanging dried herbs. Buy-in meds ensured that it smelled of rosemary and woodsmoke. Headmistress bumbled just beyond the counter, crunching the household budget up on a shareboard.
Bella was on leave from her permajob in kitchen management. Marie had officially paused her latest career-leveling track—teaching—while the pack rode the crisis out.
Gimlet still had one active income stream. As parent-partner to Frankie in her start-up job at the Department of Preadolescent Affairs, they couldn’t stop unless she did. And nobody had the heart to deprive her of anything else.
Sangria’s numbers were still up on the spreadsheet, Gimlet noted sourly, posting earns and spends. There was little give to the family, but Sang hadn’t gone so far as to formally cut the economic cord. Yet.
Right. Because if she’s the one who files for dissolution, Franks might see her as the bad guy.
The global capital trusts, established in the Clawback, guaranteed their stake gave them enough to live on, no matter what. And the pack’s adults were old enough, at this point, to have interest coming in on years of past wages. But traveling with Sangria to King’s Cross had meant paying premium prices for the train. Third and fourth opinions on Rollsy’s cancer and surgery options had escalated with each new doctor consult.
Health care was free, to a point, but indulging denial in the face of death? That, it turned out, was pricey.
“Bastille will balance things out, if you play it right,” Headmistress offered as Gimlet took in the board. “Suggesting a wager was ingenious. Rewild supporters and Risto fans will offer strokes—”
“Let’s review the numbers later,” Gimlet said.
“Of course, Mer Gimlet.”
They tapped on Rollsy’s door. “It’s me.”
Nothing.
“I’m alone.”
It unlocked, taking Gimlet in one step from bucolic country kitchen to Rollsy’s e-state, skyscraper with penthouse views of twenty-first-century Shanghai.
In sim, of course, Gimlet’s husband looked fine: tall, broad-shouldered, with jet-black hair and a luxurious beard. He had been in conference with an app Gimlet didn’t recognize, a stick insect in bright orange dashiki and a kufi. The program ghosted as the door closed.
“Reaper app,” Rollsy explained, reaching out to kiss Gimlet lightly on both closed eyes. “End-of-life counseling, body recycling options, managing my posthumous digital existence. A last bash at the bucket list.”
Gimlet’s heart sank.
“I want you to take over my house.” Rollsy gestured at their playboy digs. “Franks might want to poke around here in a few years. Archiving shouldn’t cost much.”
“Accept. Of course.”
“I’ve written her a tour of my private rooms.” He shared a handful of bright platinum keys.
Gimlet turned them over, fingering the metal. “Speaking of Franks. She needs to see you.”
A headshake. “Soon … if a window when the meds and the pain are both dialed down…”
Rather than argue, Gimlet took up a spot beside him at the window. Overlaid on the glass view was a four-by-four grid of newscycle feeds. Rollsy always turned his attention to the wider world when he needed distraction.
Gimlet preferred Marie’s wading stream.
Never mind. Be present. Take it in. Scan the headlines together.
Continued investigation of the @Freebreed attack on Paris was the top share; next was the chain of hurricanes making their way around the Atlantic. Adolescents were taking advantage of the storm to rabbit.
Thinking of lemmings made Gimlet’s stomach roll over.
Rollsy flicked that window away, replacing it with footage of Hyderabad’s superstar mayor, Saanvi Agarwal, as she voted for #babytiger in the Project Rewild runoff poll.
In Scranton, at the pyramids, a memorial for journalists who’d vanished at the end of the Setback had drawn thirty thousand pilgrim tourists.
“So much death—” Rollsy started to say.
Headmistress interrupted. “Mer Erwitz, your parents are inbound to your fleshly location. ETA eleven minutes.”
Gimlet felt a flash of guilt. Rollsy’s parents were gathering by the bedside, and they were fleshing around London …
“I couldn’t stop ’em from coming.” Rollsy sighed.
Let it go. Lots of families were scattered across the globe, spending all their together-time in e-states. The plain fact was Rollsy didn’t seem to want anyone at the hospital.
Gimlet said, “If they want to dive later, they’re welcome here. Marie’s printing steak. It’ll be a picnic. We all love your parents … and it would give you a break.”
“Thank you. I’ll make them come.” Rollsy snapped his fingers, shutting off the newscycle. Perfunctory goodbye kiss, and then he logged, leaving Gimlet with the glittering vintage skyscrapers of Beijing.
Sitting on one of the luxuriant leather couches, Gimlet said, to Headmistress, “Audit the medical consults, please. What exactly are the doctors saying?”
Time to find out how bad things really were.